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Thursday, June 19, 2014

Clint Eastwood The Director: The 1970s

There
are few actors in history with as iconic an image as Clint Eastwood. He started
acted in bit roles and TV shows in the 1955, but in the early 1960s, when he
didn’t seem to have many prospects in Hollywood, he went to Italy and made a
trilogy of “spaghetti” Westerns with director Sergio Leone. A Fistful of
Dollars (1964), For a Few Dollars More (1965) and The Good, the Bad and the
Ugly (1966) were all great movies (particularly that last one) and bad him a
major movie star. They also cemented his screen image – the so called “Man with
No Name” – a strong, silent type who did what was necessary, played by his own
rules and was answerable to no one. He was a good guy, but hardly the most
morally upright one. A few American movies followed in the next few years that
cemented his status as a movie star. And then he decided what he really wanted
to do was direct – and it’s his directing career that I really want to look at
in this series of posts.

Jersey
Boys opens this week, and it will be Eastwood’s 33rd feature film as
a director over the last 43 years. That makes him one of the most prolific
directors of the era. While I would argue that he has made only a few truly
great films, his career has been remarkably consistent -he rarely makes a truly
bad film. Of his 33 films, I have seen 25, and if I’m being honest I only truly
dislike 2 of them – although there are a few others that I think are little
more than average. Eastwood, I think, would have made a great director in the
studio era. He works fast, and almost always comes in ahead of schedule and
below budget – which is one of the reasons why he has been able to continually
make the films he wants to make. His career as a director has had a several
different stages – and he’s moved back and forth a number of times from periods
where he seems to make nothing but genre films to periods when he makes more
“prestige” films. He has won four Oscars – for Producing and Directing
Unforgiven and Million Dollar Baby – although none for acting.

Eastwood’s
first film as a director was 1971’s Play Misty for Me. Eastwood took a pay cut
to make the film – and didn’t complain. It made sense to him that the studio,
who was taking on a chance on someone who had never directed before, would want
to hedge their bets a little bit – particularly since although they had a major
star like Eastwood in the lead role, it would also be the first time audiences
saw him in a contemporary film – all his previous work he was none for was
either Westerns or War films, while this was a psychological thriller.

Play
Misty for Me remains one of Eastwood’s best films, and sets his style as a
director right off the top. Eastwood is not the most daring of directors – he
prefers to play things relatively straight and simple. His movies don’t usually
detour too far from their plot, and he doesn’t use a lot of fancy camera
tricks. He is, in many ways, a minimalist – and his films are classically
structured. That’s the case with this film, that takes a very simple premise –
a late night DJ (Eastwood) is being stalked by a woman he meets in a bar
(Jessica Walter) who thinks their relationship is more serious than he does.
The film is efficient in all the ways that matter – and Eastwood makes even the
most innocent scenes ominous and foreboding. Something bad is going to happen –
and Eastwood very slowly ratchets up the suspense until the climax. It was a
great start for the star turned director.

His
next film was 1973’s High Plains Drifter – his first of four Westerns he would
direct – and the film is perhaps a

little too ambitious for a largely
inexperienced director. In many ways, it resembles the Sergio Leone films he
starred in – as Eastwood stars a “Man with No Name” who rides into Lago,
quickly kills three thugs, and rapes the town “slut”. So impressed with his
actions, the town hires him to protect them for the ruthless Carlin brothers.
But Eastwood’s motivations are more complicated than they seem – he’s out not
just to destroy the Carlin brothers, but the town as a whole. He literally
paints the town red, renames it Hell, and humiliates everyone in town, and
leaves the place burning to the ground with a pile of dead bodies in his wake.

The
film has mystical, perhaps supernatural, overtones to it. The cinematography by
Bruce Surtees is brilliant, and the film is complicated and at times great. But
I think Eastwood’s reach exceeds his grasp with this film a little bit – and he
doesn’t quite pull off the ambitious project. It’s still a very good film – but
I think had Clint waited a few years, it could have been one of his
masterpieces.

Later
that same year, he made Breezy (unseen by me) – his first film as a director
where he didn’t star, and a film that didn’t do very well critically or
commercially. It was a romantic comedy of sorts between a young hippie (Kay
Lenz) and a middle aged man (William Holden). No wonder it didn’t go over very
well. Eastwood’s next film as a director was 1975’s The Eiger Sanction (again,
unseen by me) – a rather silly sounding action film where he plays a “classical
art professor and collector who doubles as an assassin” in a film that involves
mountain climbing. How have I not seen this movie?

His
next film was probably the first truly great of Eastwood’s career as a director
– his 1976 Western The Outlaw Josey Wales. His second Western as a director,
the film’s main character, played by Eastwood, seems very much like his other
Western “heroes” – a man of few words, and lots of action. He plays a
Confederate soldier who refuses to surrender at the end of the war, and takes
off heading West – pursued by the Union, and various bounty hunters. Along the
way, he takes up with other outcasts – most memorably one played by Chief Dan
George (who should have earned his second Oscar nomination, following the one
he received for Arthur Penn’s Little Big Man in 1971).

The
film’s first half is very much like High Plains Drifter – in that Eastwood
seems to be a man hell-bent on revenge, who kills without feeling or remorse.
He is a man who has lost everything and no longer really cares – he is alone,
and likes it that way. The second half of the movie though starts to show
Eastwood’s character re-discovering his humanity, and slowly, but surely
changing – starting to care about other people once again. Eastwood, as always,
doesn’t give him grand speeches to explain his emotions – but his performance
is more complex than most. The second half may have some moments that are
perhaps a touch too light – but overall, I still think this ranks as one of
Eastwood’s best film – with cinematographer Bruce Surtees matching his
brilliant work on High Plains Drifter here.

Eastwood’s
final film of the 1970s as a director was The Gauntlet (1977) – a not
particularly highly regarded action film where he plays a mediocre cop tasked
with driving a prostitute (Sandra Locke) from Phoenix to Vegas to testify in a
mob trail. This is another of the “unseen” for me – so I really cannot say much
about it.

In
general, Eastwood’s six films of the 1970s (even if missed three) seem to be
him sticking fairly close to what’s expected of him. His one real departure,
Breezy, was his biggest failure of the decade. Other than that he made a
thriller, two Westerns, and two action movies. He was honing his craft though –
and while you can dismiss his early directing work as mere genre stuff, its top
notch genre stuff – and I think in The Outlaw Josey Wales, he made his first
truly great movie. Eastwood wasn’t really taken seriously as a director at the
time – and in reality it would take him more than another decade before he
truly was – but looking back it’s a solid list of films in the 1970s.

About Me

I am an accountant, living in Brantford, ON - and although I am married and have beautiful daughter, I still find time to watch a lot of movies. This blog is mostly reviews of new movies - with other musing thrown in as well.